I'm usually worried about cannibalizing sales of our previous games so I try to keep some of the bigger things unique per game. I'm thinking of making an exception for classes & skills this time around. I think I'm going to keep the classes and skills in Din's Curse for Zombasite, at least as a starting point.

The hybrid stuff worked really well in DC and I think it will work even better with the trait stuff I've been working on (probably my next blog). We will of course change some of the skills to better suit a zombie game and rebalance everything.

For a change, I'm blogging about this before I make very many changes so it's a great time to get feedback from you guys. For those that have played DC, what skills do you think we should keep, which should we lose, and which should we change?

I think the main thing is to think about how the skills can remain interesting over time. I imagine the game will be similar in structure to previous outings, which means that it'll allow for around 100 levels per character. If so, there needs to be something interesting that happens to the skills as you upgrade them other than just increasing numbers. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that you have all skills unlocked from the start, meaning that players just choose what they want right away and never diversify.

One thing Drox did very well is give you different skill options over time. I'd love to see some of that influence a DC-style skill system.

Here's an idea to reduce the burden of having to not only design many skills, but also needing to design many skills over time: plant random modifications of skills every X levels. You could design random bonuses that modify skills, and which are randomly assigned to skills every X (say, 5) levels. So a fireball could get some extra cold damage, or double (2 fireballs), or get reduced cooldown etc. This is similar to D3's rune system, but doesn't have to be nearly as complex, and can't be manipulated by the player. Some of these modifications could even have a cost e.g. slower spell but more powerful. This would make a player reconsider that spell and perhaps prefer another one instead.

The other thing to watch out for is linear spell damage vs damage locked to items. Honestly, even Blizzard gave up on balancing spell damage vs item damage, and the thing to do is probably just have spell damage scale with weapon damage (preferably off of some 'minor' stat that's not the same as damage but is useless to fighters). In my DC mod, I think I eventually settled on resistances being the main stat to modify spell damage, and I think this ended up being pretty cool. This way, different magic disciplines relied on different resistances and items became cool again for mages of all types.

There's a druid skill for foraging for food from corpses. I don't know whether it should be kept or not.... certainly some hidden "rules" for what good critters for foraging are and which are not would be in order. Ork pork might be a new delicacy

There's a good bit that depends on how the zombasite spreads. If it spreads by bite, archers become far more valuable, especially ones with exploding arrows. But if it spreads by air/contact -- you don't want the exploding arrows. Mmm little bits of infected flesh everywhere -- not.

Also, what's the incubation period? Does a creature have to die before it turns? Is this World War Z (10 second incubation, bite only)? Because that was crazy they way they depicted it (it takes 4 minutes for the human brain to die of oxygen deprivation, but 10 seconds to become a zombie in that movie...with only 1 mention of a very few infected who take longer). I don't need the answers, I just think which skills/spells are useful will depend on what's going on in the specific scenario i.e. how the disease spreads and how infected critters act.

Oh -- And whether a priest/healer can delay onset or not -- we know they can't cure it...can they protect from transmission in the first place, or slow it down?